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The article of July 22 “West Virginia ranked low for preschool access,” relies on rankings by the Kids Count Data Center that fail to recognize all the facts about early childhood education in West Virginia. It is incredibly unfair to all those hard-working people who built our pre-K program to cite rankings in a way that implies their work has been anything less than a huge success. We owe it to them to convey the whole story and...

One of the more significant shortcomings of West Virginia’s public school system historically has been the erosion of actual days of instruction. Rules concerning when school could start and had to end, employment contracts, snow days, holidays, spring break and deer season all conspired to cut into school time.

The supposed goal was always 180 days of instruction, but nearly every year most counties had...

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. – The superintendent of West Virginia’s second largest county school system says the school calendar has not changed that much in Berkeley County this year, even with a new mandate for 180 days of instructional time for students.

“Last year was such an unusual year for snow days and we’ve always been right around the 180 (requirement) in previous years,” Superintendent Manny Arvon said. “I think we might have started a day sooner...

In 2012, at least 1,850 teachers retired in West Virginia —about 230 more than the state saw in 2008, according to the state Consolidated Public Retirement Board.

Those numbers don’t include members of the Teachers Defined Contribution Retirement System, which has a smaller membership than the state’s Teachers Retirement System and was closed to new members in 2005.